Cider Pressing Party

Lat night my roommates had a cider pressing party. People brought buckets and buckets of apples, to pres after my roommates had pressed their buckets and buckets of apples.  They rented a cider press for the evening and were able to get GALLONS of cider in a matter of hours. Then we began drinking the fresh pressed cider. Fresh pressed cider is AMAZING. Additional, as the night went on there was some whiskey added to the cider and some hot cider on the stove. All of it was delicious and made for a very fun social evening even though I ended up falling asleep before 10:00. 

Eurypegasus draconis

Today in Ichthyology, I learned about the Euryepagasus draconis, a species of sea horse that has large fins resembling wings.  What do you call a horse with wings? A Pegasus!  They also kind of resemble dragons, thus their scientific names.

Eurypegasus draconis is now my second favorite scientific name. My absolute favorite scientific name is still Anthopleura xanthogrammica, and really, that one is gong to be hard to beat. 

Anthopleura xanthogrammica, the Giant Green Anemone

I am happy to be a T.A. for this class, since I am a total fish nerd and I'm already learning so much new stuff about fishes.

Do you know when it is appropriate to say "fishes" rather than just "fish" for the plural form of the word? It's okay I didn't know either. 

Fish - is the plural form if there are multiple fish of the same species. 

A school of fish.

Fishes - plural if there are multiple species of fish.

A school of fishes

Eavesdropping

Today I overheard the following from a guy riding by on a bike. He was talking to a woman. I was walking on the sidewalk.

"The idea of a vagina is really disgusting!"

Really, dude. Just the IDEA! I laughed and guessed that they guy is going to need therapy some time in the future. Or maybe he is beginning a promising career in the GOP.

All women have them, all men came out of one, and most men come inside of them too. (For the sake of argument let all = 99.9%)

Some Fish Stuff

Today I started my Ichthyology teaching assistant position. I thought I would commemorate the occasion with a fish related post. During class today there was mention of the Gulper Eel, an interesting deep sea fish, with an amazing huge mouth, capable of eating organisms much larger than its self. I find most deep sea fish fascinating, and thought I would share a picture of this crazy fish with you.

Gulper Eel 

My favorite fish of all time is the Deep Sea Anglerfish, usually seen with a bioluminescence  'fishing lure' on their head, as seen in the movie Finding Nemo.

BEST FISH MOVIE EVER! 

Deep Sea Anglerfish with Parasitic Male

They are also the only specie of fish I know of that mate for life. The bad ass fish you usually see are the females of the species, and the males are tiny parasitic fish that will attach to the female and never let go.

When googling "Gulper Eel" for this post Google asked me if I meant "Glowing Squid" it said it was a related search. I had never heard of Glowing Squid before but went ahead and looked at some pictures. These things are beautiful! I only have an hour between classes so can't do much additional research here, but look at these pictures, and be amazed! I think a Glowing Squid would be a really awesome blacklight tattoo.

I don't know what this is but it showed up on a last minute google search and it's FREAKING adorable! 

30 Years Old

Today is my thirtieth bithday. It doesn't feel very different than most other birthdays, but I have managed to celebrate this one more thoroughly. I thought the day provided a good opportunity to reflect on the last year. I've accomplished many things that I am fairly proud of and I thought writing a nice list would be fun.

I ran the Prefontain Run run again this year. This is the third year in a row, and despite not training as much as I had in the past and gaining 20 lbs, I finished in good time. My times and race pace for the past three years:
2010-Time: 56:18 Pace: 9:04
2011-Time: 58:42 Pace: 9:27
2012-Time: 57:50 Pace: 9:19

TJ and Eric ran with me too. We all rocked tutus and had a fun time. 

Running the race helped me keep one of my goals for the year, which was to get in better shape again and loose some of the grad-school weight. To further this goal I am also signed up for my first half marathon later in October. 

It's been exactly a year since Eric and I started hanging out. Or dating, or whatever you want to call it, since it took us a very long time to call it anything. Last year on my birthday weekend I was out climbing the South Sister with him. 

We had planned to climb the mountain again this weekend but were prevented from it by the Pole Creek Fire and resulting ash cloud hanging in the air. Still, over the last year, him and I have managed to hang out at fairly regular intervals whenever scheduling has permitted it, and have had a lot of adventures while we were at it. 

I haven't gone crazy and killed my family yet. I think this should be self explanatory. It has been a fairly difficult year for most my immediate family, and stressful for all of us I think. I react badly to stress on, top of stress, on top of stress, and that pretty much describes my year. I take too much out on the people closest to me, and sadly, that is mostly my family. Also, occasionally T.J., who has become like family to me. 

TJ is still one of my best friends.  Around my birthday last year, T.J. and I will still in the slightly delicate situation of managing to stay friends after having a relationship. A few scathing e-mails and some long discussions later we've really got the hang of the best friend thing. Which, unfortunately for him, means he has been elevated to the status of belonging to my extended 'adopted' family. See previous paragraph. 

I got to raise two adorable baby bunnies.  I almost forgot that this happened this year, but it was a major factor early in the year. The babies were born just before my birthday last year, but I'm still counting the raising and subsequent finding of good homes in this years reflection. 

Due to my crazy changing life, I was unable to keep any bunnies after last winter. The babies were easy to find homes for but the two adults were surrendered to Green Hill Animal Shelter. I loved them both so much, and went out of my way to make sure that the shelter I took them to would not euthanize either of them because they were old or hard to find home for. I was a able to check the shelter website until they were both adopted, so I know that Optimus Prime and Elita One have found good homes how. 

Optimus Prime, the day I caught him in my backyard. 

Elita One, the day I caught her in my garden. 

Grad school is still taking up the majority of my time. Period. By far the most memorable aspect of last year, as well as the one before, has been the work I have put into getting my master's degree.  I'm still plugging away at it, and am able to focus more on the school side of things now that my job with the watershed is over. I'm happy to be a T.A. to get more of the traditional grad school experience, where previously my experience has been very non traditional. 

Some Corvallis "Wildlife" at the Park

Since I've moved to Corvallis (yes, I finally got to move!) I've been doing a lot of walking and running around where I live now. I found this cute little park not far from where I live 

Picture of the park the first day I found it, its getting dark, but the pond looks really neat at dusk. 

Today when walking through the park, I though I saw a bobcat! I took this picture, I can still see it in the middle, can you? I'm not 100% convinced it really is a bobcat, but it's still pretty fun to think that it might be. It wasn't really that scared of people and I'm not sure if this is typical bobcat behavior or not, I'm use to seeing them run away from people pretty easily. Exciting never the less. 

The park also has a flock of ducks that I think are adorable. The run up to any new person the inters the park. They are obviously use to being fed, despite the signs around the park asking you not to feed the birds. 

They really wanted some of my bagel. But I didn't share with them. 

Once they realized I wasn't sharing they wondered away, but for some reason ran back to me when I opened my  iced coffee. Weird ducks. 

 This last picture is another park picture, you can kind of see on the far side of the pond there is a guy setting on a bench under the tree. This guy biked to the park and was playing his violin. It was amazing! Beautiful free music in the park, and just randomly too. At first I was the only other person at the park, and then this mother and her two kids showed up as well (they are in the picture too.) The oldest kid thought that the violin playing guys was absolutely amazing. It was cute to watch.

This morning at the park there was a bunch of people doing tai-chi in the amphitheater. I kind of want to take my yoga mat down there and do some yoga at the park, but then I would be doing yoga in public, and I'm not into that idea at all. Maybe some day really early in the morning!

What if...? Writing Prompt.

What would happen if you could fly whenever you wanted? When would you use this ability?

If we are talking some kind of biological flight, where humans have acquired the ability to navigate in the air like birds or insects: 

When wouldn't I use this ability?! If I could fly whenever I wanted I don't think I would really walk much of anywhere. Maybe in buildings or if I was unable to hover or move slowly during flight. I imagine flying is a faster form of transportation so it would make my morning commute nicer.

I have some experience moving in three detentions thanks to my scuba diving background, and I think having that ability in air would be great!  

Of course we might be talking about flight that involves some kind of equipment, potently requiring fuel. I'm thinking jet packs! In this case safety might be more of a consideration if I choose to fly or not. 

Also to be considered is the number of other people that could fly. Is it a normal thing, or am I special? If only I can do it, powered or not, I might want to reserve it for special circumstances, like where someone's life needs saving, and I have to wear a costume so no one knows it's me.